by Aimee Wilson | Sep 12, 2019 | News
When it was time for the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles to mount their production of the drama ‘Mysterious Circumstances,’ which explores the death of the world’s foremost Sherlock Holmes expert — and includes Holmes himself — they turned to equipment from RC4 Wireless. “I have personally been working with RC4 products for 5 years now, but the theatre has been working with the gear much longer. We actually have an RC4 Wireless Series 2 transceiver packed away,” notes Ramine Ameli, Lighting and Projection Supervisor.
‘Mysterious Circumstances’ was chock full of action. “There ended up being a scene change every three minutes or so. So, having lots of different set pieces that could move around freely without wires really established every location,” notes Ameli.
As for the plot, “The show revolved around a box of unpublished Sherlock Holmes manuscripts, so we had three identical boxes equipped with different gags. All three boxes used an RC4 Wireless DMX2dim. The first box appeared to be floating during pre-show, and as the show began, the keyhole light-up -LED tape in a mold- and the box appeared to get sucked into the keyhole. The second version of the box had a glowing keyhole but did not open up. This was to have the audience associate this box with the one they saw in the beginning. The third version of the box had LED tape inside it to light up someone’s face as they looked into it,’ Ameli explains.
Read the full story of RC4 Wireless and Geffen Playhouse here.
by Aimee Wilson | Jul 17, 2019 | News
In Europe, Robbie Williams is a legend; he regularly fills stadiums and his productions are some of the most anticipated on the continent. One of his dreams was to do a Vegas show, and to make every detail of Williams’ show perfect, Production and Lighting Designer Sean Burke, principal at Holes in the Dark, needed reliable wireless DMX technology. “When the wireless stuff came up, I did a bit of research on it, looked around, and saw that Baz [Halpin, of Silent House Productions] used RC4 Wireless products on the last Katy Perry tour. I know the crew chief, and he said they didn’t have any problems with it,” confides Burke. That was enough for him to entrust RC4 Wireless with the job for Williams’ “Live in Las Vegas” show. Matt Bakken, the Master Electrician on the show, adds: “When a lot of people in the touring industry use wireless, they use equipment from RC4; to me, if your wireless is working in a stadium with 25,000 plus people with cell phones, that’s good enough for me.”
For the Williams’ production, the team built their system around an RC4Magic Series 3 DMXio-HG Transceiver with External Antenna; working along with the DMXio are six RC4Magic Series 3 DMX4dim 4-Channel Wireless Dimmers. “Addressing was easy and very straight forward; pairing the receivers with the transceivers was simple as well. The system was exactly what I wanted and it just worked,” reports Bakken.
There are several props using the RC4 Wireless DMX4dims; specifically, two giant Martini glasses and four stylized box frames, called Gogo frames. “The Gogo frames are open aluminum frames that the dancers push around and dance inside. The Gogo frames and the Martini glasses have wireless receivers on board and battery packs, so they are completely wireless,” explains Burke. In terms of batteries, Bakken adds, “The batteries are lasting pretty much forever on them, and sometimes they forget to plug them in to charge them.” Both the Gogo frames and the Martini glasses were manufactured by ShowFX, who also handled the Katy Perry props.
Read the full story of RC4 Wireless and Robbie Williams here.
