CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Chandelier one of the stars of "Phantom -- The Las Vegas Spectacular"

ReviewJournal.com: "The one that spectacularly assembles itself each night at the start of the show. Later, for even more thrills, it whooshes down for a simulated crash right over the heads of gold-circle patrons.
It even has a name: Maria.

3 comments:

hmiura said...

With the chandelier having such an iconic "role" in the show, I really was impressed by the entire effect in the Vegas version (which I felt was much better-paced as they trimmed the show). When I had the chance to see it on Broadway, it was gliding at a relatively slow speed that the entire audience could probably have ran over to New Jersey by the time it reached the stage floor. It was simply not an impressive stage effect. I truly wonder if it is possible to update the system/renovate the theater to bring that similar effect to Broadway.

David Feldsberg said...

With so many productions of Phantom done over the years, I believe the Venetian has found a way to distinguish themselves from all the rest. Although audiences should place some importance on who is actually playing the role of the Phantom, it is necessary to have something else in the show to rope the patrons to the theatre in the first place. This is where the chandelier comes in. It's impossible to look at it as anything less than a tremendous feat of engineering and automation. Add to that the fact that this chandelier has been succesfully crashing down on audiences multiple times a day for almost 5 years now. I think the people over at Spiderman should give the folks over at the Venetian a call and ask for some pointers.




Bonus:

I found these videos on the internet if anyone is interested in seeing the chandelier in motion.

The first is the rising of the chandelier during the overture, the second shows footage of the automation software used to control it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H69vTNqHz7s&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRjPZwJUzNg&feature=related

Robert said...

To think that this was one of the first major thing that was flown over audience heads, I wonder if this was an inspiration for the Spiderman show. Hearing that it took them 3 months to program this effect seems pretty ridiculous. With Spiderman having some many problems with their flying effects, I wonder if they had more time to program and work out the bugs, if that extra time would have prevented most of the problems that they have been having. Maybe is it just that they are pushing the limits of what people with technology can handle and withstand. Is this technology meant for scenery only. I would like to go and see this chandelier in action to see how amazing it is in person.